# Project outline for 2009_1 #
**Keywords:** OOM; pronouns; first-mention; developmental
**Overview:** Experiment from Hartshorne, Nappa, & Snedeker (2015). Development of the first-mention bias. Journal of Child Language, 42(2), 423-446.
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**Publications:**
1. Hartshorne, Joshua K., Rebecca Nappa, & Jesse Snedeker. (2015). Development of the first-mention bias. Journal of Child Language, 42(2), 423-446.
**Team:**
1. Joshua Hartshorne
2. Rebecca Nappa
3. Jesse Snedeker
4. Lauren Grenzig (RA)
5. Callie Sae Her (RA)
**Data Collection:**
Cambridge
**Description**
An eye-tracking study of 5 year-olds looking at the first-mention bias in pronoun interpretation. Details of method are described in the journal puplication and should be looked for there. Short description follows:
40 five year-olds (4;11;16-6;1; M=5;7) and 36 adults participated. Nine additional adults and three additional children were excluded for excessive track loss. All participants were native English speakers.
Four novel cartoon characters (two male, two female) were created. Visual scenes like Figure 1 were created, with two of the characters standing equidistant on opposite sides of midline. Characters were not engaged in any activities, and the background was simple and did not disambiguate the referent of the pronoun (a fence, a tree, a rock, a house, etc.).
Each participant received eight gender condition trials and four trials in each of the other conditions. In all conditions, which of the four characters was first-mentioned was counter-balanced within and between participants. Each of the eight repeated-mention condition stories came in a short and long variant; which variant was used was counter-balanced across subjects. The gender condition additionally counter-balanced which character (first-mentioned or second-mentioned) matched the pronoun.
The counter-balancing discussed above produced four lists. Stimuli were placed in a pseudo-random order such that no condition appeared more than twice in a row. The same order was used for all four lists. Four additional lists were created by reversing the order of the stimuli, for a total of eight lists. Four to six children and three to six adults were tested on each list.
Participants were familiarized with the characters and drilled on their names until they could name each character rapidly and without hesitation. Stimuli were presented on a Tobii T60 desktop eyetracker, which also recorded eye movements. Offline responses (pointing) were recorded by the experimenter.
**Notes:**
Experiment was run in E-Prime
Crucial for analysis is knowing where each word appears in the sound file. Timings are listed in StimulusInfo.xls and WordTiming.xls.
